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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29399826">The Night Washerwoman</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MymbleHowl/pseuds/MymbleHowl'>MymbleHowl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(very loosely), Celtic Mythology &amp; Folklore, F/M, Near Death, Non-Explicit Sex, World War I, but possibly explicit and odd lactation kink?, milk mother - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 09:40:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,186</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29399826</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MymbleHowl/pseuds/MymbleHowl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Injured World War 1 surgeon, Jon, has a weird sex dream OR dying World War 1 surgeon, Jon, has a mystical encounter (not exactly supported by any known myth) that saves him. You decide?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jon Snow/Sansa Stark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Night Washerwoman</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This takes place on a battlefield and then goes some place very odd. It does all end happily.</p><p>I am being brave and posting this. Comments are the best (kudos is lovely but I realise its not going to be everyone's cup of tea).</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The shelling is only a distant rattle by the time they arrive. Thankfully, it has moved on, further down the line. Jon sees Val already on her knees in the mud, stripping the gas-soaked clothes from young men before their skin blisters irrecoverably. He checks Ghost’s saddlebag and sends him out past where Sam is crouching beside a fallen soldier, into the murk. Then he gets to work pulling these first casualties into the ambulance, triaging as he goes, directing Satin to the boy who will probably die before they could get him back to the field hospital, cleaning and bandaging a tall man who grunts and grinds his teeth but never screams as the iodine stains his already burning skin.</p><p> </p><p>He turns to the next wounded soldier but just then, as he looks up, Ghost is at the edge of the trench and the dog looks at him with his garnet eyes and Jon must follow, for Ghost is always right, always comforts those who are dying but always comes back for those who might be saved now.</p><p> </p><p>He scrambles up after Ghost.</p><p> </p><p>“Edd,” he calls back, knowing Edd will follow.</p><p> </p><p>They claw through the mud and barbed wire of no-mans land. Having veered west they might be 300yds from the ambulance now and Edd, with the stretcher, is not as quick as Jon. Ghost pulls away, hurrying on. This will be a bugger to get back, Jon thinks as a great noise and light rattles his head.</p><p> </p><p>When Jon blinks his eyes open he is lying on the ground, the murk is cleaner somehow, more mist than smoke and there is grass around him. Jon frowns, taps himself. He seems to be fine, he stands up. Ghost is nowhere, Edd is nowhere.</p><p> </p><p>He can’t see the glow of either trench, he can’t hear the shelling anymore, his ears should ring with noise of the blast, they don’t.</p><p> </p><p>He walks, because, what else can he do?</p><p> </p><p>Then he hears the babble of a stream and it takes him home; running through the woods, sticks as swords, the children from the big house wanting to join in, well not the one who sat primly and didn’t want to dirty her dress, but the rest, laughter and falling to the ground.</p><p> </p><p>He walks in a trance towards the babble.</p><p> </p><p>Moonlight cuts through the mist.</p><p> </p><p>There are bloodied clothes all about him, lying in the grass. But of course there are, Jon thinks, it's a battlefield. There is not just the babble now, but splashing too. Jon looks ahead through the mist, there is a figure crouched at the stream, methodically pulling the bloodied clothes into the water, scrubbing them. Its hair streams greying and ragged down its back.</p><p> </p><p>Jon stands there frozen, numb. A whisper of a story told by Old Nan long ago catches in his brain, a washer woman who washes the clothes of those about to die, a washer woman who might grant wishes, a washer woman to whom you must tell the truth.</p><p> </p><p>He is just dreaming, this is just a dream, as his life, no doubt, slips away. It's ok, he thinks, he remembers the tea turning cold, a mother wailing, a hasty exit. So many dead; friends, patients, enemies. Why would he deserve to live?</p><p> </p><p>Some flicker of the story in his brain compels him to approach the figure, there is something about greeting her before she sees you.</p><p> </p><p>“Mother,” he says, who knows why the word springs from his lips, the washerwoman is nothing like his mother, any mother he knows.</p><p> </p><p>“Child,” and the figure raises her head to him, her eyes shine with a pale moonlike blindness, “do you seek kinship with me?”</p><p> </p><p>“Yes,” Jon says, unsure how the story goes.</p><p> </p><p>“Are you my child?”</p><p> </p><p>“No,” he says, convinced he must be truthful.</p><p> </p><p>“Then you will have to claim a milk-kinship,” she says.</p><p> </p><p>She puts aside the garment she is washing and opens her ragged shift, bearing her breasts, they droop, wrinkled, her skin is almost translucent.</p><p> </p><p>“Well child, you know how to suckle?” She asks.</p><p> </p><p>It is a strange dream as I die, Jon thinks, and he kneels low and takes the old woman’s teat between his lips. His mouth fills with milk and he almost gags in shock. But it is sweet and rich and then he is swallowing it down. Unthinkingly, he puts his hand to the washerwoman’s breast as if to squeeze out more, it is firmer, smoother, rounder than he expects. He opens his eyes and looks up, a woman is smiling down at him mischievously, she looks nothing like the old, blind washerwoman. Jon falls back, she has eyes that sparkle blue in the moonlight, her skin is smooth, and her grey hair is shining copper now, it falls, a ribbon of fire over the breast he has not suckled at.</p><p> </p><p>She follows his eyes, “oh, greedy boy,” she admonishes playfully.</p><p> </p><p>Then she brushes her hair away to offer him the other breast and he takes it his mouth, sucks down the milk, delirious.</p><p> </p><p>Finally he rocks back on his heels, woozy, milk drunk. He looks up at her, she is still a glorious redhead.</p><p> </p><p>“Well,” she says, “I have washing to be getting on with," and she picks up the next garment.</p><p> </p><p>Jon’s eyes focus suddenly, he sees the shoulder lapel, the letters CPT SNO stitched there.</p><p> </p><p>She looks from the garment to him, her lip curls slightly.</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, do you not want to die, Jon Snow?” She says.</p><p> </p><p>“No,” he claims, surprised at how emphatic he sounds.</p><p> </p><p>“Hmm,” says the woman, “and do I remind of you of someone you have desired?”</p><p> </p><p>Jon wants to say, no, deny it, but he is compelled to honesty, he nods, gritting his teeth as he does it.</p><p> </p><p>“And you remind me of someone too,” the woman says, her blue eyes wistful, “well I am sure you are aware that you might distract me from my task and alter your own fate.”</p><p> </p><p>And she places his jacket back beside her and puts her hand on the back of his neck and pulls him up to her. Their lips brush and he is kissing her, gripping her waist, desperate.</p><p> </p><p>All he can do is distract her, distract himself from whatever is happening. He distracts her with kisses on her marble neck, with fingers brushing her hips. He distracts her with their skin pressed together, he distracts her until she pulses underneath him and then he carries on distracting her until he is shattered by pleasure and exhausted and he floats asleep against her flushed skin.</p><p> </p><p>When Jon awakes everything is dim and blurry. He hears the clicked clatter of people busy about him.</p><p> </p><p>“Nurse Stark,” says an officious voice, “stop loitering beside the patient and pack up the blood transfuser, Dr Seaworth needs it in Post-op seven.”</p><p> </p><p>“Of course, Sister Mordane.”</p><p> </p><p>Jon wills himself to focus, sees her smile first, her blue eyes, the band of hair just visible beneath her nurses cap shines copper and Sansa Stark raises her finger to her lips. Jon swallows.</p>
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